Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

As you might expect, there is much more to the "voter fraud" angle in the U.S. Attorneys Purge scandal than initially meets the eye. As you might also expect, we've taken keen notice as we've long been following and reporting on the insidious machinations behind the GOP/White House/Rove scheme to (rather successfully) invent the cynical notion of a "voter fraud" epidemic in America for purely political purposes.

First... Allow me to set the stage for the unenlightened by referring you to an amazingly wonderful new report [PDF] on the manufactured myth of American "voter fraud" as released by ProjectVote.org and authored by Lorraine C. Minnite, Ph.D., an assistant professor of Political Science at Barnard College, Columbia University.

Most voter fraud allegations turn out to be something other than fraud.

There is a long history in America of elites using voter fraud allegations to restrict and shape the electorate.

The historically disenfranchised are often the target of voter fraud allegations.

Finally, an academician thoroughly debunks --- nay, eviscerates --- the long-worked, well-moneyed, and invidious GOP plot to create the illusion of an American "voter fraud" epidemic (as distinct from very real election fraud concerns). The point behind the effort is solely to push for disenfranchising laws and restrictions in an effort to keep legitimate voters away from the polls in our democracy. If you read only one page of this report, "The Politics of Voter Fraud," it will be well worth your time!

Second... The phony "non-partisan" GOP front-group calling themselves the "American Center for Voting Rights" (ACVR), created in 2005 for nothing more than to facilitate the White House/Karl Rove "voter fraud" schemes, seems to have suddenly gone missing! BRAD BLOG readers will recall the despicable operatives who set up their "tax-exempt," "voter fraud" chop shop just three days before testifying at a staged Congressional hearing on the 2004 Ohio Presidential Election before the now-disgraced, felonious former Ohio Rep. Bob Ney of the House Administrative Committee. We broke the story exclusively at the time, and have continued reporting on it in a long series of special coverage reports ever since.

The alleged 501(c)3 group --- which has never produced paperwork to back up its tax-exempt status, to our knowledge --- was founded by the "non-partisan," "former" Bush/Cheney '04 Inc. national general counsel, Mark F. "Thor" Hearne, along with "non-partisan" RNC Communications Director Jim Dyke. Dyke now works for non-partisan Dick Cheney's office. Hearne then, and apparently still now, seems to be working for Karl Rove as one of his top national operatives.

Since news coverage of the tip of the iceberg in the GOP "voter fraud" scam has been revealed as directly related to the U.S. Attorney Purge scandal, it seems that all of a sudden the ACVR's detailed and propaganda-filled website has suddenly disappeared down the memory hole. As of today, both of ACVR's domain names AC4VR.com and AmericanCenterForVotingRights.com each return "Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)" errors.

Gone, but not forgotten. As we find out more on the AWOL ACVR we will, of course, let you know.

Lastly... Though certainly not leastly, John Boyd, an Albuquerque, New Mexico, based elections attorney who worked with the Democratic party in the state during the 2004 election, sends us the following inside account of the scandal surrounding recent reports that purged NM U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was removed for his unwillingness to prosecute claims of "voter fraud" in the state prior to the 2004 Presidential Election.

Before the election, Boyd helped represent the Dems in defending against the scurrilous GOP "voter fraud fraud," as he calls it. After the election, he successfully filed suit, along with the watchdog organization VoterAction.org, against the state concerning failures in their DRE/touch-screen voting system. That suit eventually led to a statewide ban on such systems and a requirement for paper-based elections.

Boyd writes that the firing scandal is actually "far worse than it now appears." His harrowing, first-hand account and reasons for that claim, as sent to us this morning, details how the GOP manufactured their pre-election "voter fraud" crisis in the state, despite lacking any evidence of any actual crimes.

His first-hand description of the events follows in full...

THE FIRED U.S. ATTORNEY, DAVID IGLESIAS, AND “VOTER FRAUD”

In order to blunt the scandal arising from the Republican efforts to persuade U.S. Attorney David Iglesias (New Mexico) to indict some Democrats just before the last election, Senator Pete Domenici and other Republicans have explained that, really, they’ve been “disappointed” with Iglesias for some time. Why? Because, according to Domenici et al., Iglesias failed to aggressively pursue the problem of “voter fraud” in New Mexico. These Republicans are undoubtedly telling the truth about this. The problem for them is that this explanation doesn’t make things better for them, it makes things far, far worse. Read on.

In the run-up to the 2004 election, there were intense efforts at voter registration going on in New Mexico. The result was the enfranchisement of many minorities and poor. The Republicans were apoplectic, of course. The registration campaigns added about 65,000 voters to the rolls in Bernalillo County alone, about a 10% increase.

The Republicans’ response (and it has since been surfacing in Congress as well as in other states) was to demand strict “voter i.d.” laws. Strict voter i.d. laws have the effect of disenfranchising many students (who may not have in-state licenses, or other forms of i.d. showing an address), old people, minorities and poor who for many reasons may not possess the type of identification such a law would require.

The Republicans have been trying to sell these laws for the last two or three years, but they have needed a “hook”. The hook is what they refer to as “voter fraud.” If they can persuade the public that people are voting twice, or that people who shouldn’t be permitted to vote are voting, or that other kinds of “fraud” are occurring, they can sell “voter i.d.” as the solution. The problem for the Republicans is that voter fraud is not even a tiny problem. There are not a lot of people who are prepared to risk a felony conviction by finagling a way to vote twice, and there are not a lot of illegal aliens trying to figure out how to vote in American elections. As I learned from a Harvard professor who has studied the history of voting in America, the banner of “voter fraud” has a long and ugly history because it has been repeatedly used to justify impediments to voting, from poll taxes and literacy tests to the present day push for strict “voter i.d.” laws.

So in New Mexico, in the late summer of 2004, a group of Republicans marched into the county clerk’s office and asked if there were any “problem” registrations associated with the voter registration drives. The clerk said “yes” and told them that there were some 6000 defectively completed registration forms (missing ss#’s, po box addresses, no signature, that sort of thing). The problem for the Republicans, however, was that these didn’t represent fraud, they were just typical and expected screw-ups by the registrants or the people registering them.

The Republicans nevertheless held a press conference, and grabbed headlines, announcing how terribly shocked they were to report that there were over 6000 “fraudulent registrations” submitted by these nefarious voter registration groups, and New Mexico’s voter rolls were being grossly corrupted. This had the predictable effect on the public, whose response was that they could now understand why a strict voter i.d. law would be a good idea.

The Republicans filed suit to try to get a state district court declaration that New Mexico’s very narrow voter i.d. statute (which applied only to first-time voters who had mailed in their voter registration applications) should have a much broader interpretation, under which most new voters would have to present i.d. at the polls. I represented the Democratic Party as an intervenor in the suit.

The Republicans attached to their complaint a few examples of what they alleged to be “clearly fraudulent” registration applications. This was to show how dire the situation was and how badly the state needed a more expansive interpretation of its voter i.d. law. Suffice it to say that we investigated the ostensibly fraudulent registrations and it turned out that they were clearly not fraudulent.

For example, one woman had signed two different registration applications, both of which were accurate. She signed one on a desk and one on her hand as she was walking across campus, with the result that her two signatures appeared different.

Another involved a couple who had registered at a voter registration drive table but had not received their registration cards. Worried that their applications has been lost, the husband returned alone to a registration table and filled out two new forms and, with his wife’s permission, signed her name.

These were “Exhibits A and B” to the Republicans’ allegations of rampant voter fraud. Only one of all the supposed examples was actually fraudulent. It was a registration application that a teenager had filled out as a prank. The testimony was clear that his name would never have appeared on the rolls because of the cross-checking that occurs with respect to every new registration, nor was there any indication that he would even have dreamed of trying to vote.

It was this evidence – if it can be called evidence - that the Republicans presented to David Iglesias when they demanded that he appoint a federal task force to get to the bottom of the “serious voter fraud problem” facing New Mexico. Iglesias understandably blew it off. What the Republicans wanted from him, of course, was not convictions (there was no evidence of any crimes, other than the teenager’s prank), but HEADLINES! The Republicans’ theory, probably correct, is that if they can get enough headlines about voter fraud, they will be able to sell their disenfranchising voter i.d. laws to the public. Iglesias, understandably, had better things to do with his time and with our money.

What this means, of course, is that the U.S. Attorney scandal is far worse than it now appears. The Republicans are telling the truth when they say they have been “disappointed” with Iglesias for a long time. What is not understood, however, is that the reason they’ve been disappointed with him is that before the last Presidential election Iglesias failed to obey the Republican politicians who asked him to devote his resources to publicly pursuing non-existent fraud. As we on the other side of the litigation referred to it, it was “the voter fraud fraud.” Senator Domenici and Representative Wilson should hardly be able to find any political cover in their excuse that they had been disappointed by Iglesias’ supposed failure to aggressively pursue voter fraud.

So this is a three-pronged scandal. First, there is the scandal of the “voter fraud” fraud which the Republicans have been trying to use to help promote restrictive, disenfranchising voter i.d. legislation. Second, there is the scandal of the Republicans attempting to enlist the US Atty’s office in their voter fraud fraud by getting him, at taxpayer expense and contrary to the most elemental ethics, to use his office to generate headlines about “voter fraud” when none was occurring, for the sole purpose of shaving Democratic party margins. Third, there is the scandal of firing Iglesias for refusing to go along with this fraudulent manipulation. In other words, it’s not BETTER because the Republicans have been “disappointed” in Iglesias for some time. It’s WORSE.

THis is all following on the 2004 Presidential election, and the pressure on the US Attorneys re "voter fraud" just so happens to focus what's available of the prosecutorial and investigatorial apparatus of this country on a place where it will DO NO GOOD: "Voter fraud" is nearly nonexistent overall, and certainly nonexistent as a deciding factor in elections. (Both parties spent millions to investigate such double voting in 2004 in Washington state in the gubernatorial election contest and after souring the state could not find enough such "illegal votes" to change the result in a race decided by less than 100 votes out of 3 million cast.

But, as the sentencings of elections officials in Ohio for recount rigging felonies in Ohio 2004 on the presidential race makes clear, redirecting prosecutorial resources also turned the gaze of US Attorneys away from the only place where real election fraud can take place: the places that have the capability of delivering the desired RESULT: the ELECTION RESULT.

Insiders. (Election Officials)

and

Vendors of electronic voting software, who then claim they can count all the votes in secret.

and just coincidentally the exit polls are disproportionately discrepant with election results in battleground states.

And states with Republican governors or secretaries of state.

Oh there's a lot more but this is all just coincidental, because history books contain no shenanigans for control of the world's largest economy and sole military superpower, right?

More on this re-frame of "voter fraud" pressure (which constituted crimes or incipient crimes and a distraction from election fraud at:http://tinyurl.com/3c4gyk

Hmmm... Brad, it seems that this articles is no longer top of the page on BradBlog.. instead the "Coulter's new bilebook" article is tops... blog software glitch our Coulter practicing blog fraud... who's to know?

More details about Miers/rove/gonzales revamping the US Attorneys offices as a bullet proof vest for Rethugs and a weapon to attack Demos.

..

It was then-Chairman of the Senate Judicary Committee, Senator Arlen Specter who technically added the provision expanding executive power. According to Senator Specter, however, the change was requested by a Justice Department official named Brent Tollman. The push for legislative change, that is, came from within the executive branch. And Spector's chief counsel, Michael O'Neill, inserted the provision that Tollman sought into the legislation without the Senator's knowledge. (Tollman, incidentally, is presently the US Attorney for Utah. At 36, he is, I am told, one of the youngest U.S. Attorneys ever. And Joe Conason has asked pointed questions about O'Neill's background).

Hard questions certainly need to be asked about how partisan politics entered into firing and replacement of prosecutors. But in addition, we need to ask to what extent was that process interwoven with the effort to secure increased presidential power over prosecutorial replacements? This is, as I have explained elsewhere, an executive cares deeply about executive prerogatives far beyond those that law or history would support.

That Tollman is a sitting U.S. Attorney ought not to make him immune from congressional inquiry about his past responsibilities. Both Harriet Miers and Alberto Gonzales too ought properly to know how and why Tollman came to put in his request. And certainly more must be known about why O'Neill inserted this provision without his Senator's knowledge.

bu$$h, rove, miers, gonzales,tollman, and o'neill are all fascist neo-cons
who are pro-unitary executive, to give monkey-boy the power of a dictator/despot.

david addington's name can likely be added as an prime architect of this brown-shirt, jack-boot idea to expand upon their new and unique brand of justice that was transforming to the conception of - JUST - US !!!!!

Jack Abramoff's and Tom Delay's ass about to be set on fire for illegalities and wrongdoings,.. Bu$$hco just fires the US Attorney digging into the matter.

...

Today, the Los Angeles Times reported that the White House had demoted Fredrick Black, a US Attorney that was investigating Bush pioneer Jack Abramoff's relationship with the Guam Superior Court, where he earned over $300,000 as a lobbyist.

While he was employed by the Guam Superior Court, Abramoff was also arranging extravagant junkets for Congressional Republicans (including House Majority Leader Tom DeLay) to the Commonwealth of the Northern Marinas Islands in order to kill legislation that would have ended sweat shop conditions in the garment factories there.

From above,.. this stuff just turns your stomach. This is how the bu$$h administration made themselves bullet proof from any oversight and/or review and possible conviction. A political scumbag criminal like KKKarl Rove handed out the big badge of law enforcement out to his cronies. His cronies shutdown any investigations detrimental to bu$$hco. Then these US Attorneys were to be groomed to pad their resumes for later consideration for judge-ships in the federal courts. Federal district, appellate, supreme courts packed with bu$$h cronies.
KKKarl rove is the worlds best bullet proof vest, for the Mafioso bu$$hco.

...

From above article,..(comment # 21)

And who did the White House replace Black with? A lawyer recommended to Karl Rove by the Republican Party of Guam.

Black's successor, Leonardo Rapadas, was confirmed in May 2003 without any debate. Rapadas had been recommended by the Guam Republican Party for the job. Fred Radewagen, a lobbyist who had been under contract to the Gutierrez administration, said he carried that recommendation to top Bush aide Karl Rove in early 2003.
It looks like history is repeating itself. Newsweek has reported that the White House is considering an old Bush friend as a replacement for the person overseeing Peter Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor investigating the Plame leak.

Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is "likely" to be named as acting deputy A.G., a DOJ official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter tells NEWSWEEK. But McCallum may be seen as having his own conflicts: he is an old friend of President Bush's and a member of his Skull and Bones class at Yale. One question: how much authority Comey's successor will have over Fitzgerald. When Comey appointed Fitzgerald in 2003, the deputy granted him extraordinary powers to act however he saw fit-but noted he still had the right to revoke Fitzgerald's authority.
It looks like the White House's policy is to put politics in front of national security, first in the Abramoff investigation and now in the Rove (Libby/Cheney/CIA) leak investigation.

The important thing to remember on the Gonzo issue is that the administration was avoiding any Congressional oversight by USING THE EMERGENCY POWERS to replace attorneys general WHEN NECESSARY in the Patriot Act for POLITICAL PURPOSES. Yes, W had the right to fire AGs, even though this rarely, rarely happens EXCEPT AT THE BEGINNING OF A NEW ADMINISTRATION. This is yet another example of the abuse of executive power in the name of national security to undermine the Legislative and Judicial powers vested by our Constitution to balance the threat of an imperial presidency. This is why it stinks to high heaven. This is a high crime and at the very least misdemeanor because of the lies told to Congress. Watch, they'll be more! Gotta love e-mail. It keeps track of those high crimes and misdemeanors!

Here's are more details on harriet miers from her slimeball days down in Texas, as she was changing frat-boys shitty diapers.

Chimperor was being groomed for a presidential bid. There was some sort of a problem with a phone call Poppy made to keep monkey-boy out of Vietnam. GHWB wanted gwb to be boosted up the waiting list to get into the Texas National Guard, a well connected fellow bud took care of the request. Now speed ahead about 5 years are more. GWB had a checkered/drug/alcohol term during his fly-boy days. Two things needed to be done to clean up the record of Georgie's royal failed fly-boy stint. One: the paper work was less than stellar - the file needed to be purged from the file cabinets and records warehouse. Two: The Poppy phone call while he was a Congressman and used his pull/power/ and connections the recipient of that phone call needed to be silenced. The first inclination is to think - Bu$$h Crime Family,.. just hire a killer with a rifle and shoot this guy in the head and leave him to die right in the middle of the street. But no,.. for some reason they decided to use the bear hug approach. Use other peoples money to buy this guys silence. So harriet miers contacted the guy who got the phone call from Poppy bu$$h that save frat-boys ass from Vietnam. Also too this same guy had access to the Texas National Guard files. So this guy, harriet miers and karen hughes purged monkey shit for brains - nasty fly-boy records. Remember the bu$$h crime family likes to use other peoples money to pay their bills or stuff their pockets. 25 MILLION DOLLARS OF FUNDS FROM THE TEXAS STATE TREASURY - BOUGHT THIS GUY'S SILENCE. He walked off happy as a clam,the secret remained a secret and the Texas taxpayers never realized they got the royal fleece from Geoge Walker Bu$$h and the bu$$h Crime Family. Every one lived happily there after. Humpty Dumpty never fell off the wall,.... or did he ?

Misconduct of Attorney Alberto Gonzales
Office of Disciplinary Counsel
State Bar of Texas
La Costa Center
6300 La Calma Dr., Ste. 300
Austin, TX 78752
{snip}
The following complaint relates to the violations of the above referenced Texas Disciplinary Rules of Professional Conduct by Mr.Gonzales in his capacity as U.S. Attorney General, which are set forth below.

Brad, you're a prince; I have been waiting for you to break this story re: New Mexico.

Funny, isn't it, that ACORN had negative stories about their voter registration efforts both in St. Louis and Kansas City before the 2006 elections. (This is Thor's home state, afterall.) In fact, in the City of St. Louis, some people had their registrations denied (until Voter Protection Coalition intervened) because they did not enter a driver's license number, which the Sec'y of State later pointed out is not a state requirement. Most of these registrations were obtained on the MetroLink. How can it not occur to an Elections Director that some citizens cannot afford to own cars?? Instead of serving to protect and affirm voting rights they are crying "voter fraud" without actual evidence to show; it is a smoke screen for the protection of DREs --- nothing more nor less!

And we were also having this fight with Thor (literally serving as the Republican attorney) in the Supreme Court about a Voter ID law, which was struck down by the Judiciary.

What this all boils down to is that some people in positions of power do not want the poor, the disabled, the elderly, &/or people of color to vote. Gee, I wonder why not?

"JUST US"/justice,.. in the hands of criminal Nazi/Fascists is a very dangerous thing.

Remember when these fascists circumvented the FISA LAW, the lawyers at the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility were asked to investigate the DoJ rule/law that permitted the domestic spying/wire tap, gonzales got all upset. gonzales rushed off to see bu$$h. bu$$h pulled the investigators security clearances. The investigation was shut down.

((King bu$$h, Queen cheney, and prince rove continued to read about all the dirty porno every body was looking at and ordering on Capitol Hill and then blackmailing them. Political opponents or enemies don't have a chance with bu$$$$$hco.))

...

In January, four congressional Democrats—Maurice Hinchey of New York, John Lewis of Georgia, and Henry Waxman and Lynn Woolsey of California—asked the Office of Professional Responsibility to find out who in the Justice Department told the president and General Michael Hayden (then head of the National Security Agency) that it was legal for the NSA to engage in warrantless eavesdropping on Americans as well as in collection of their records (as recently revealed by USA Today). A corollary question was whether George W. Bush started the eavesdropping program even before he told the Justice Department he was doing it.

The 990s for 501(c)(3) American Center for Voting Rights and its sister, 501(c(4)American Center For Voting Rights Legislative Fund are online at the Foundation Center's 990 Finder if you are interested in picking up some names associated with this odious operation.

The firm of Mehlman, Vogel, Castagnetti in Washington DC served as the Center's Executive Director. How many Mehlmans in DC are not related to Ken?

Older versions of the American Center for Voting Rights website are in the internet archive. Search "www.ac4vr.com"